I woke thinking I had just heard the click of a shutting door. Night still colored the windows. I lay breathing, delighted to be breathing; I tasted each breath, smiling at the glory of breath. I didn’t think I would be able to go back to sleep, but I did. In the morning, the eyes didn’t seem as scary. That’s the beauty of mornings. I remembered what Angie the powerful laundress had said about the white-haired man’s eyes. Well, a rap on the head plus a description like that, and . . . nasty dream. Except it didn’t feel like a dream. I looked around the room but nothing looked different.

  The doctor came in and poked at my head; it didn’t hurt as much. The nurse delivered breakfast. They made me eat. Then the doctor had me get up and walk back and forth a bit. My clothing had been folded and arranged on a chair; my holstered gun hung from the chair’s back. Because I had managed to stay upright, I figured it was time to leave; I picked up my trousers and sat on the bed. I got them on okay, but when I leaned over to pull on my boots, my vision blurred into red and black rings. I sat up until things cleared.

  “I’m not sure you should leave,” the doctor said. “At least go back to your hotel and rest. And don’t get on a horse for a couple of days.”

  I promised I would follow her instructions. I finished dressing. Taking off the nightshirt in front of a lady felt strange, but this lady had seen the inside of my skin. My derby was pretty well scuffed and crumpled, which was fine; I didn’t feel like putting a hat over my injured scalp. I thanked her and settled the bill.

  “I’ll have to inform the marshal that I released you,” the doctor said. “My advice is not to keep him waiting too long or try to leave town without seeing him.”

  Good advice, I’m sure, but I didn’t let it bother me. Outside, I found a fine day, with a blue of sky that defied illness and infirmity. Blood-eyed gamblers couldn’t hurt me on a day like this. But wagons and carriages . . . they clanked and rolled through the streets. Had there always been such a mad jumble? I started across, but the threat of a passing carriage forced back to the safety of the boardwalk. My ability to navigate had been much reduced. I decided to stay on this side of the street, for now. Except a wall appeared, a human wall. A congress of giants blockaded the boardwalk. Three of them, dressed in an assortment of dusty range clothes, as if they had just finished bringing their herd of elephants to town and were preparing to celebrate. Each wore a different colored and shaped hat, gray, brown, and black. The shortest of the trio might have only been six and a half feet tall. They stood in front of a hardware store, talking in voices loud enough to dent the sky. If the store was their destination, they weren’t in a hurry to go in.

  Seeing them . . . I didn’t know what to do. My brain jangled against the back of my head. How does a body usually pilot a clogged passage? I stopped. More than stopped—I froze, locked in place, no way to move onward, no way to find another path. In the street, two riders passed, then another, followed by a wagon driven by a young woman wearing a green bonnet. Why did I need to go anywhere else? The street was a river filled with many craft. From here, I could enjoy my view of whatever flowed by.

  Two of the giants had their backs to me, with one facing; he wore a brown hat with a broad brim. His beard and shoulder-length hair could have used barbering. He spoke in streams of profanity interspersed with precise and erudite phrasings. “Chance isn’t the insanity you think it is. You’re pig shit, man, if you think there’s any place, any valid place, for determinism in modern thought. The world is interconnected. Its parts are constantly banging up against one another. Sometimes what happens is predictable, sometimes not. That’s Chance. You can’t go around saying shit like, ‘there’s no external or objective truth.’ Fucking archaic, man, archaic Puritan shit from a whale’s asshole.”

  The largest giant, who wore a black bowler, stepped back; the wall of the hardware store stopped him. He leaned on the wall and I swear the clapboards moved. “What do you mean? You’ve never mentioned this before, I thought you were pious, and—”

  “You thought? You don’t fucking think, you follow dogma. Your brain slides through a soup of idiocy.”

  “Soup of idiocy, that’s a hoot,” the smallest man said. He slapped Brown-hat on the shoulder. “Or maybe it’s a stew of idiocy? Stew is like soup, only thicker, right?”

  “Shut it, Lonnie. We’re not talking to you.”

  “You can’t just dismiss the Plan of Determinism because you have a problem with religion,” Black-hat said.

  “And you can’t keep bringing this cheese-hawk shit up again and again. If I thought you could learn to use your fucking brain, I might try to educate you.”

  Suddenly, the flesh-wall parted! At the corner appeared two women dressed in dark shawls and bonnets. Black-hat said, “Pardon us, ladies,” and the smallest swept off his gray derby. Passing me, one of the women presented a glance indicating my unworthiness. But why? I thought to ask for an explanation of her reasoning but waited too long. They crossed the street. The brave detective must cope, must adapt. The knot of man-flesh refilled the boardwalk. No doubt they would again part for proper ladies. But for the detective, they were a pile of fallen rock. A rockslide blocked my trail once, up a mountain in Colorado. I was on my way to infiltrate a ring of mine guards who were stealing gold from the owners. I had a scary time, climbing across that loose rock, with nothing to stop a fall besides the bottom of the mountain.

  “No more of this preordained crap. People make their own choices. Stupid choices, mostly. Who would preordain all the stupid that people do?”

  Black-hat moved closer to Brown-hat and waved a hand at him. “But how do you know that the choice you think you made freely wasn’t the Preordained choice? All you have is the freedom to think you’re free. But that’s God’s will too. The devil unsettles the mind. If you come back to Jesus you’ll find peace and your thinking will settle.”

  “What a sad fucking existence, walking around as if everything you do is fixed from eternity. That’s pathetic. If everything is predetermined, you can’t ever have regret. Why regret what was inevitable? Fucking stupid. You have to know that your actions have consequences. You have to have a feeling of achieving something. You have to realize that failure could slap you in the fucking ass.”

  Gray-hat interrupted. “Hey, that’s funny, slapping ass and fucking ass?”

  “The only consistent way to represent a world whose parts may affect one another through their conduct being either good or bad is the indeterministic way. What interest, zest, or excitement can there be in achieving the right way, unless we are fucking enabled to feel that the wrong way is also a possible and natural way—a menacing and imminent way? And what sense can there be in condemning ourselves for taking the wrong-ass way, unless the right way was open to us too?

  “I’m not talking about some goddamn metaphysical pestilence that you need to run from. Chance just means that no part of the world, however big, can claim to control absolutely the destinies of the entire shitbucket of humanity.”

  Brown-hat stopped talking and pointed toward me. “See that little fuck over there, with the bandage on his head?”—they turned to look—“He’s been standing there, not going this way, not going that. You think he’s waiting for the universe to tell him where to go? He must be waiting for a fucking signal from somewhere.”

  “Ask him, Maceo, ask the little fuck what he’s waiting for.”

  “What you’re saying . . . you don’t believe that the HAND of God is in everything we do?” Black-hat choked on the last part of his statement and sank deeper into the wall, as if afraid he would be struck down by that hand.

  “It’s not fucking either-or. Think about poker. Somebody wins. Usually the fucker with the most skill. You’re saying that the winner is chosen by the hand of God and was preordained before any of us were born. I would say, if there’s a God, he’s got more important things happening than a piss-ass poker game. Than each fucking piss-ass poker game happening everywhere in the world. Must be the hand of God is training the best poker players. What an arrogant and pathetic thought. Determinism is dead. Dead. Use your brain instead.”

  “Hey, Maceo, that’s a good rhyme,” Gray-hat said. “You should use it in one of your poems.”

  “You can’t talk about poker, a game of . . . chance . . . as an example of your philosophy,” Black-hat said.

  “Poker is chance but it’s also skill. What can be better than poker as an example? You’ve got skill but you can’t control everything. Just like life. Life is chancy.”

  Brown-hat . . . Maceo . . . turned and stepped into the street. A wagon stopped to let him pass, the driver no doubt afraid that his horses would be injured by a collision. The other two followed. The boardwalk was now clear. But where should I go? I had needs, a plan; I wasn’t waiting for a signal, was I? At the corner I turned right, still afraid to cross a street. The next intersection was clear enough of traffic for me to make it to the other side. I felt better. Walking clears the head, even a battered head. The street I was on ended at the train station. Praise the hand or ass of God! I had business at the station, with Caldwell the conductor.

  Caldwell was away but had left me a note with the ticket agent. “I was just about to look for a boy to carry it to your hotel,” the ticket agent said.

  Caldwell’s handwriting was neat and formal:

  A porter recalls having seen Stephens. Recalls because he had a gambling debt that Stephens had forgiven in return for favors relating to passengers and their business—which I warned him against continuing. He said that Stephens and the well dressed Westerner I described to you took a train from Port Lavaca on the 12th of September to Victoria and another later that day from Victoria to San Antonio. My man was certain that there was no third companion. He recognized the well-dressed Westerner as Dawson, or Lawson, who runs a saloon called McFarley’s on Flores Street in San Antonio.

  He said Stephens spends a good quantity of time around the coast but has no idea as to what business the man does there.

  Sure, Silverberg could have stayed on in Port Lavaca, alive, or taken a different train back to Victoria. But the closed bank account, the signatures, the other men returning without him, all pointed to one thing, and it was a thing I didn’t like.

  I went to Wolcott’s to have my supplies loaded on the Friday train to Port Lavaca. Then I stopped at the livery and asked Butler to take Blue Swamp to the station in the morning. After all that arranging, this little fuck was pretty beat. In the hotel lobby, I spotted a stocky redhead with a lot of beard, standing near the staircase, where he could see anyone coming in from either the main door or the restaurant, which had a separate entrance. He wasn’t wearing a badge, but his demeanor said lawman. I told him I was going to bed now and would see the marshal in the morning. I asked the clerk to have food sent up to my room, and my part in the day ended.

  I sank toward sleep with a blessed smoothness. Then, like the sudden irrevocable click of a bolt in a lock, the descent stopped. Sleep had been in reach, just across a little slip of creek, but now it might as well have been at the far end of the ocean. I rolled from one side to another, searching for that comfortable position, the perfect body-bed-pillow arrangement to ferry me onward to the land of sleep. My wound kept me from lying on my back, and the more I thought about not lying on my back, the more I knew that my back was the only position that would allow sleep. Eventually, I decided that I couldn’t avoid lying that way, no matter how it might hurt. I fluffed the pillow and settled my head, and . . . a stab of pain propelled me onto my side. The relief from the pressure on my head was almost like being comfortable. I slept.

  Unfortunately, I also dreamed. Those red-brown eyes chased me. I ran. Blind with fear, I ran. And lost myself in a maze. The walls were twice my height, white, decorated with black or sometimes red shapes . . . shapes of . . . they were cards, playing cards. After three jacks, I turned left. A light glowed from somewhere ahead. I walked toward it. The cards swayed, as if angered that I was leaving. One fell into the next, and the next, one after another, falling toward me. A gap appeared, the end of the maze! I ran and fell into space. As I fell, I tried to conjure the blue-green air. Air to breathe, air to buoy my fall, but no air came. I slammed into something hard, and woke on the floor. I climbed back into bed. Eventually, I slept again.

  Morning came. I got up and washed my face. Beside the washbasin was an unopened deck of cards. It hadn’t been there when I went to sleep. I carried the deck with me to the dining room and dropped it in a wastebasket. I didn’t want it in my room.

  At breakfast, a clerk brought me an answer from the associate of Silverberg’s I had contacted. Coffee helped my head somewhat. I worked my way through a pile of ham, eggs, and toasted bread with butter. Another cup of coffee helped the food settle, then it was time for my morning visits.

  First, the doctor, who did some probing and said I could survive without the bandage. And second, Marshal Griffin, who was sitting on the porch in front of his office, at it with the guitar again. I took the chair next to his. He managed to put his instrument down long enough to bother me for more information. He didn’t complain about my not having come sooner. I liked that. It indicated that we might be able to work together. He said he had talked to Wilson, at the bank. Wilson said that Owens was not authorized to have a key.

  “Wilson wanted to sack him right off,” Griffin said. “I convinced him to wait. I want to look in at all the locksmiths first, see if he made his own copy. It’s best to have as much evidence as possible. Meanwhile, Wilson is checking their books for irregularities.”

  “Find out about Goliad locksmiths too,” I said. “He spends a lot of time at his sister’s.” I looked over at the buildings across the street, a line of small, false-fronted stores. There was a butcher shop called Murchison’s next to a harness shop, then a jewelry store; the jewelry store had boarded-up windows. “Owens must be stealing from the bank,” I said. “Maybe he helped Stephens too. But did he set Slack-Face on me because of Stephens, or because he thought I was investigating him?”

  I handed Caldwell’s note to the marshal. A wagon passed, driven by a woman in men’s clothing. The marshal nodded at her and tipped his hat. A couple of riders met in the middle of the street and started chatting. A wagon loaded with timber had to veer around them, scraping against the boardwalk as it passed. The driver cursed, the riders laughed. A regular day in just about any town.

  “Stephens hasn’t broken any laws—that I’ve known of,” Griffin said. “In fact, he’s well-liked in some circles. If Owens lost money and owes him, that’s his problem, but if he helped Stephens with something illegal, it gives us something on Stephens too. Dawson-Lawson doesn’t sound familiar. Who else is there? Who connected these men to a bunch of rich East Coast Jews?”

  I hadn’t told him about Rafkin, the alleged Romanian Jewish refugee. Now I did, including what Levi had told me and the answer I had received from Silverberg’s associate. “Silverberg must have met Rafkin in St. Louis. We connect Rafkin to Stephens, and we have him.”

  “Might be the end of that trail,” Griffin said. “Last month—right around the time we’re talking about—a man got his throat cut in his hotel bed. That was a mess. Description sounds like your Rafkin. Signed in as Grolph, barbed-wire salesman from St. Louis. Hotel people said he spoke with a funny accent, which could be anything, but I’ll attest to the rotten teeth. He’d stayed there before, but survived the earlier visits. Hotel people wouldn’t or couldn’t say whether they ever saw him with anyone else.”

  “Different names, but he always sticks with St. Louis,” I said. We watched more wagons and riders going along. Time for me to do the same. I told him I was heading Lavaca-way in the morning. He recommended the Seaside Hotel and said he would wire me anything he unearthed.

  5

  Knack for Finding Bodies

  I packed my new saddlebags with what I was taking and stowed the rest of my things in the doctor bag, which I left at the front desk for storage. Before leaving, I mailed a report to the boss and sent a telegram to Rabbi Cohen, letting him know that I didn’t know much other than not to expect anything good about Silverberg’s health. I assumed that I would get back to Victoria in a couple of weeks.

  The train ride covered an hour and forty-seven minutes, through ranchland, scattered woods, coastal plain, and marsh. I didn’t mind leaving Victoria. Having your head stomped on doesn’t endear you to a place. Caldwell stopped to chat. He gave me a name to look up in Lavaca, a faro dealer named Dakota, who worked at a place called the Porthole Saloon. I also had a note from Griffin to the town marshal, but I preferred to reconnoiter on my own. I dozed. A smell woke me—sea rot, like what you find after a storm stirs up sludge and deposits it on the shore to fester. Then it was gone. I couldn’t see anything that might have caused it.

 

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